7 ms·

Forcing vegan diet upon kids can lead to jail time in Belgium

45 points by elorant 7y ago

antris 7y ago
Do they also make sure the parents aren't giving them junk food? Because I'm pretty sure obesity is a bigger problem than this.
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
  Well, if the parents don't allow their children to eay anything other than junk food, then yes, that should be forbidden. Does that happen though?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/03/health/poor-diet-blindness-scli-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/03/health/poor-diet-blindness-sc...
    - ScottFree 7y ago
      Do you have statistics on how common this is?
- jbob2000 7y ago
  Vegan diets are much more destructive to children than candy and pop. If a child was only eating candy and pop, then yes, it would be harmful. But usually, kids eat junk as a supplement to otherwise stable meals. You need protein and iron to grow, you just can’t get a kid to eat the vegan versions of foods that provide this.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Are you seriously saying there's just no way for a parent to get their child to eat vegetables and legumes?
    - jbob2000 7y ago
      Didn’t say that, I said that it’s hard to get kids to eat vegetables that provide protein and iron at the same levels that chicken fingers do. Good luck getting a kid to eat a plate of spinach.
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago
        All depends how you're raised. My sisters and I devoured vegetables. My mother would have a plate of cut-up turnips waiting for us when we got home from middle school. Yum. I still eat raw cabbage and turnips as snacks into my 30s because of that while everyone around me asks me how I could eat that. You're thinking of a kid who has been raised on ketchup and chicken fingers suddenly encountering a plate of spinach leaves for dinner. Sure, I'd expect problems in the short term. But let's take a little bit of responsibility as parents. I had a neighbor who was fed so much candy at her house that when she slept over at my house (slumber party) she would throw tantrums because my parents didn't pair candy with dinner. I'm sure her parents thought the same as you: heh, good luck getting children to eat chicken fingers without their side of candy, it's the only thing that works for us!
  - Madmallard 7y ago
    I was told (I believe by a doctor) that the iron you get from vegan sources isn't readily absorbed anyway. It id best to get heme-iron from meat as it is readily absorbed
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      This is true, however it's not as severe as people think and you can easily get several hundred % of the RDA of iron in a day on a whole food, plant based, diet. https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/iron/ https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/iron/ has some content that covers this /r/plantbasediet semi-regularly has this come up in threads too
  - chunkyslink 7y ago
    Please provide evidence? Have you seen The Game Changers movie ?
    - jbob2000 7y ago
      I’m sure the evidence is out there, but I have so many first hand experiences of people having health issues from vegan diets, that I’m not terribly motivated to go out and look for it. When I was in high school, I had a few friends who tried to go vegan. One fainted in the shower, another fainted during track and field, one was falling asleep in class all the time. As soon as they went back to their normal diet, everything went back to normal for them. In first year university, a friend lost 30lbs and became very emaciated from their vegan diet. You could say “they were doing vegan diets wrong” and I would agree. That’s the point. It’s extremely hard to do vegan diets “right”.
      - chunkyslink 7y ago
        I know many many, very healthy plant based people and athletes. I regularly run ultramarathons and I cycle 30 miles a day to work (2000 ft of climbing) and I'm plant based. Would you say I'm doing it right? I don't do anything especially difficult with my diet. I would suggest that film. Might open your eyes.
      - HuShifang 7y ago
        Ok, one more anecdote for you: I've been vegan for about five years, for ethical reasons. (Which is to say, I basically have eaten a similar diet to what I did before, only vegan -- so vegan ice cream in lieu of dairy ice cream, sofritas Chipotle burritos rather than steak Chipotle burritos, Beyond burgers rather than cow burgers.) I've taken the occasional multivitamin but nothing special -- I get B12 and all that from fortified soy milk and other foods. I'm physically larger -- at six foot, my weight has ranged from 202 to 185 lbs as a vegan rather than 185 to 170 lbs as it did when I was omnivorous -- and run (my main form of exercise) faster, farther, and more frequently than when I ate omnivorously (I.e. it's not that I've gotten fat). Blood work has always been perfect, recovery times much lower, energy levels fine, etc. Zero health issues. Your friends were doing it wrong. Probably, they were eating nothing but salads, or stacking dietary restrictions (e.g. gluten-free or raw).
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    How? On a whole food, plant based, diet it's easy to get EVERYTHING with the exceptions of B12 and vitamin D which can easily be supplemented either as pill or by fortifying foods (fortified nutritional yeast, fortified grains). Since going plant based I get far more vitamins/minerals/micronutrients than I EVER did eating a largely meat-based diet. Go take everything you'd eat in a day and plug it into Cronometer (or a typical standard american diet) . Then take a whole food plant based diet that comes close to (or does) hit the daily dozen [1] with the kcals within 5% of your typical diet and look at the differences. Purely subjectively I feel incredibly better eating plant based. Last year I was eating 1-1.5lbs of meat a day and a bunch of processed foods as a strength athlete with vit a in limited quantities from the occasional organ meat and some vitmain c from the occasional sweet pepper with minimal fiber. Now I'm eating a fraction of the protein I was (yet my strength keeps going up, my recovery is far better and DOMS severity is way down). Yesterday in 2086 kcals I had: - 182% of my daily fiber (pre-plant based I'd hit 20-30% and poop something the consistency of modelling clay) - 71% calcium (which I further supplement with a pill) - 0% b12 (which I supplement via pill once a week) - 100% folate - 349% vitamin A - 48% B1, 76% B2, 49% B3, 55% B5, 268% B6 - 466% vitamin C - 0% D (which I get daily in my calcium supplement) - 36% Vitamin e - 157% Vitamin k - 68% copper - 261% iron - 62% magnesium (which I supplement 100% RDA at sleep anyway because it helps me fall asleep fast) - 87% manganese - 41% phosphorous - 201% potassium (before plant based I'd rarely hit 100%) - 13% selenium (was travelling last weekend so didn't get to the health food store to buy more brazil nuts) - 69% sodium (pre-plant based I would hit several hundred % to over 1000% daily) - 19% zinc - 108% protein (77.7g with via cystine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine and valine) I ate 65g mixed greens, 536g bananas, 11g of carrots, 28g of dates, 1g of turmeric, a great value 'keep it green fruit & vegetable smoothie' pack I found in the bottom of the chest freezer, 544g of yellow potatoes, a single serving bag of quest protein chips I had leftover from going pre-whole food, 1 g ground cinnamon, 432g of black beans, 285g of drained sweet corn, 174g of sweet peppers. On a typical weekday pre-plant based I'd have had 1lb of ground chicken, a #2 from McDonalds for breakfast (sausage egg cheese mcmuffin with a hash brown and a diet coke), about a half pound of chicken breast, 40-60g of protein powder and a pouch of Uncle Ben's microwave rice or some microwavable macaroni and cheese. Using the rice pouch in the former meat-heavy diet instead of mac, and 40g of protein powder, I was getting: 2141 kcals - 18% fiber (6.9g) - 21% calcium - 138% b12 - 12% folate - 21% vitamin A - 72% B1, 106% B2, 393% B3, 147% B5, 291% B6 - 6% vitamin C - 2% D - 20% Vitamin e - 4% Vitamin k - 51% copper - 180% iron - 40% magnesium (which I supplement 100% RDA at sleep anyway because it helps me fall asleep fast) - 8% manganese - 193% phosphorous - 96% potassium (before plant based I'd rarely hit 50%) - 185% selenium - 140% sodium before hot sauce on the rice and ground chicken - 88% zinc Now, in which scenario do you think I'm getting better nutrition... [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/ https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/
  - seanhunter 7y ago
    I'd love to see a source demonstrating that vegan diets are more destructive to children than candy and pop. As to your assertions around protein and iron, this is a commonly-held belief that is partially correct, but based on a fundamental misconception about how diet works. Your body doesn't make protein directly using dietary protein. It digests protein in the diet into amino acids, which are transported through the bloodstream and used those amino acids to make protein. As long as you have a balance of all the essential amino acids in your diet it doesn't matter where they come from. Animal protein sources are "complete proteins" (ie they contain all essential amino acids). Although there are complete protein sources that are vegan (eg soy), most vegan protein sources are incomplete (they contain some essential amino acids but not others), so vegans need to be more careful than non-vegans. However as long as they have some grains and some legumes they are getting all the amino acids and will be fine from a developmental standpoint. For example, see https://www.verywellfit.com/vegan-protein-combinations-2506396 https://www.verywellfit.com/vegan-protein-combinations-25063... Likewise, there's also no reason for a vegan diet to be deficient in iron or anything else, but again, it's necessary for vegans to be a little more thoughtful than meat-eaters to ensure this. See for example https://www.everydayhealth.com/anemia/anemia-risk-for-vegans-and-vegetarians.aspx https://www.everydayhealth.com/anemia/anemia-risk-for-vegans...
- cbsks 7y ago
  Just because there are larger problems doesn’t mean that they should ignore the smaller problems.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
    Sure, but we're far from prioritizing headlines accordingly.
- the-dude 7y ago
  Are you living in Belgium? Did you look up the stats?
RenRav 7y ago
>Children can follow a vegan diet if it’s accompanied by medical supervision, regular blood tests, and vitamin supplements This really should be the case for any diet for children. It makes sense to invest a little into society's future.
- groovebits 7y ago
  A child does not need vitamin supplements in a omnivore diet though
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    Depends on the actual food supplied. They could probably do with it if they eat fish fingers and chips every night.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    In many countries, it's darn near impossible to achieve an omnivore diet that isn't supplemented. There's direct supplementation in things like vitamin D milk, folate fortified wheat, and iodized salt, but, also, supplements added to animal feed serve to increase the levels of some nutrients in their meat. Notably, B12. What's interesting to me is the level of overlap between the list of things that vegetarians are advised to take pills for, and the list of nutrients for which fortification is typically applied to animal products. The big gap is calcium, which people are often advised to get from milk, but that also seems like a kind of crap piece of public health advice given that ~75% of the world population is lactose intolerant. My sense is that vegetarians and vegans do have a higher need to voluntarily supplement their diets, but this is as much about public policy around fortification assuming that everyone eats an omnivorous diet as it is about the vegetarian or vegan diet itself.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      You're stat is technically close to correct, but the implication is wrong for many HN readers. Around 68% of the global pollution have lactose malabsorbtion, but only 36% of people in the US have lactose malabsorbtion. Not everyone with lactose malabsorbtion is lactose intolerant. > You are more likely to have lactose intolerance if you are from, or your family is from, a part of the world where lactose malabsorption is more common. In the United States, the following ethnic and racial groups are more likely to have lactose malabsorption: > African Americans > American Indians > Asian Americans > Hispanics/Latinos https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/lactose-intolerance/definition-facts#common https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-disea...
thrower123 7y ago
Good, this should be seen as a case of child abuse. It's not healthy for children. If adults want to take up that diet, then fine for them, they can make their own choices, but children have no choice but eat what is put on the table. The other issue is that your kid is going to be "the vegan kid". In general, one should not try to paint a target on one's children if one can avoid it.
- chunkyslink 7y ago
  Have you got any science to back up your emotions ?
- h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
  >The other issue is that your kid is going to be "the vegan kid". In general, one should not try to paint a target on one's children if one can avoid it. There were plenty of vegetarian kids in my school with me (vegans were a rarity then), and they didn't get any particular stick for it. Besides, even if they aren't vegan they'll still get short/tall/pimply/ginger/nerd/.* of the same intensity, so I think this is a pretty weak argument.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    Being ginger isn't such a pain in the neck for other people to make accomodations for if they want to include you. All of these competing quasi-religious food restrictions introduce unnecessary overhead. And people are often not reasonable about bowing to the demands of politeness or necessity, and insist on absolutism in their diets. Frig trying to plan a birthday party when little Timmy's parents think he should be vegan, and little Billy's parents think he is gluten-intolerant, while Frankie's parents are enforcing paleo raw foods, and your kid just wants a regular Funfetti cake and real ice cream.
Jamwinner 7y ago
A step forward. Note this is the case in the USA also. If your child is malnurished for any reason, you are responsible. How people spin the protection of children as bad, because of their own bias, boggles the mind. Nothing is wrong with feeding your kid veggies, but something IS wrong with denying your child nutrition based on your own philosophical hangups.
- chunkyslink 7y ago
  > philosophical hangups This is a strong statement, when there is more than enough evidence to support that everything is available in a plant based diet. Modern scientific thinking will tell you that eating a plant based diet is 1. The best way to fight climate change and ecological destruction and species extinction. 2. The health benefits to athletes of a meat free diet are now known and logged. The only slightly philisophical hangup would be against animal cruelty and global agribusiness. The rest is science and in the public domain.
  - dalore 7y ago
    There is no evidence (and actually evidence to the contrary) that a plant based diet can provide all essential nutrients. Sounds like you watched Game Changers on Netflix and now that's your knowledge. None of that was scientific at all and full of inaccuracies. All the athletes mentioned saw their performance go down after adopting a plant based diet. There are virtual no athletes at the top of their sport who got there on a plant based diet (plenty who started on animal and then moved to plant, but you will see their performance drop). Animals are needed to fight climate change. Without them the soils would have no nutrients. It's a symbiotic relationship. They eat plant matter we can't. Grown on areas that we couldn't grow stuff. So they are vital to supplement our food. Going plant based would be a huge ecological disaster.
    - cannonedhamster 7y ago
      You are so misinformed as to be silly. There is no reason whatsoever a vegan diet would lead to performance decrease. None. There's entire cultures that have survived on plant based diets just fine. Just because you're all in on keto you don't have to prove to the rest of us you have no idea what you're talking about. What does animals being needed for a healthy ecosystem even have to do with this conversation? You're just throwing jello on a wall to see what sticks.
ashelmire 7y ago
> This implies higher requirements for protein and essential fatty acids. The body does not produce them, it must be brought in via animal proteins. This is not true. Proteins and fatty acids are found in many common vegetables and it's not difficult to get a healthy balance of the above. Harvard's school of public health, recommends, "Get your protein from plants when possible" [1], and it's not hard to find many other sources suggesting the same. 1. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/protein/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...
- dalore 7y ago
  It's well known that plants can't/don't provide all essential nutrients without supplementing. B12 is a major one amongst others. Yet the reverse is true. Sidenote: I wouldn't put much stock in Harvard school of "nutrition". They have massive conflicts of interest with companies like Monsanto and also numerous problems with their methodology like oversimplification of the issues. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2013/05/27/top-science-journal-rebukes-harvards-top-nutritionist/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2013/05/27/to...
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    B12 deficiency isn't even well understood. The amount you need is in micrograms over multiple years. And no you cannot survive properly on an all meat diet. Wow. Your lack of knowledge on the subject of food nutrition is very poor. It's interesting you decry Harvard as having a "conflict" so nothing they say must be true because it disagreed with your preconceived idea of truth.
  - jdmichal 7y ago
    Wikipedia has plenty of other citations, if you have issues with Harvard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining#Criticism Summary: Yes, eating solely one food may eventually cause an issue. For instance, eating only rice would eventually cause a lysine deficiency -- on the order of ~88% of required amounts. Eating pretty much any other food that is not lysine-limited would likely be enough to make up the ~12% gap.
throwaway5752 7y ago
This headline must be some sort of basic intelligence test, that sadly a number of poster are not passing. Why do I say that? The animal-product-free diet isn’t technically prohibited, and the ruling doesn’t necessarily equate veganism with child neglect. However, it will make it easier to prosecute parents who impose the strict diet and whose children have health problems. and However, opinions on this matter vary worldwide. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, is not opposed to vegan diets. "Although there have been case reports of children failing to thrive or developing cobalamin deficiency on vegan diets, these are rare exceptions," the academy notes on its website. "Multiple experts have concluded independently that vegan diets can be followed safely by infants and children without compromise of nutrition or growth and with some notable health benefits." So if a kid in Belgium is visibly malnourished - ie, abused - and the mechanism of abuse is a restrictive diet that is not being applied correct, then the parents can go to jail. In general, the diet is not illegal in Belgium and one of the largest associations of childrens' doctors in the world (AAP) is not opposed to that restrictive diet (and comes close to endorsing it). This is a non-story.
- poelzi 7y ago
  Cobalamin deficiency is a result of our prewashed food in wester society. Vitamin B12 is only created by bacteria on the surface of plants and excessive washing removes it. Eat more dirt ;) (I sometimes inject B12 IM due quite low blood levels detected last year. Regular intake of supplements should also do the trick).
ACS_Solver 7y ago
The headline is somewhat misleading, unsurprisingly. Child neglect can lead to jail time. The ruling in question will make it easier to prosecute for child neglect in cases where children develop health problems due to a forced vegan diet without appropriate dietary supplements or medical follow-ups. The ruling itself is essentially a health authority stating that a vegan diet is not suitable for children unless properly supplemented - as far as I'm aware, it's generally accepted that vegans are at a high risk of certain deficiencies and need to pay particular attention to those. Here in Sweden, there have been some relevant cases lately. In one case, a couple was convicted after keeping their baby on a strict vegan diet, and ignoring several warnings from doctors that the baby was malnourished and needed milk. In another case, which was national news earlier this year, a 17-month old infant was brought to the hospital, underdeveloped and so malnourished that, according to the trial, she would have died within hours and was only saved by intensive care. The parents, as it turned out, had only given the baby vegan food, and had never taken the baby for any checkups.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bjoli 7y ago
  > The parents, as it turned out, had only given the baby vegan food, and had never taken the baby for any checkups. Iirc they had used almond milk instead of breast feeding. Whoever thinks almond milk is a valid substitute for breast milk is unfit as a parent. I have hung on quite a lot of vegan forums, and these kinds of parents are rare and are quickly told right by others.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  I think, if you were to ask pediatricians their greatest health concerns for children today, that most would say obesity and comorbities, then asthma. Malnourishing a child is obviously bad, whether it's poorly controlled vegan or keto. It is not a pressing public health concern, though.
HorizonXP 7y ago
Veganism can work, if you are knowledgable about your body's requirements. Realistically, most people are pretty crappy about what they put into their bodies. My opinion is that most people throwing stones against veganism aren't exactly paragons of health themselves. I know that I'm not, and I'm not vegan. The bigger issue with veganism is that the rest of us non-vegans can eat whatever we want and still be somewhat healthy, purely by accident. In veganism, you do need to be aware of the balance of amino acids your body requires, and the various vitamins and minerals too. You can't haphazardly just eat whatever plant-based foods you want; you have to plan a bit more. I would hazard a guess that most new vegans are just jumping onto what's trendy, without doing adequate research. Just look at the swathes of vegan YouTubers that recently had to start eating meat again due to health problems. With new products targeting vegans becoming available, this is getting to be a bit easier. I have an infant son that is currently intolerant to dairy and eggs, even when his mom ingests it and he gets it via nursing. We've had our share of frustrations with trying to find products that they both can eat that don't have milk, eggs, or milk-based ingredients. So I'm a fan of the new options available. My fear is that these products start to go down the path of gluten-free foods; that it becomes a marketing buzzword and makes it impossible for the actual target market (i.e. celiacs) to actually eat the foods. Personally, if I ever decide to give up meat, I'd probably ease into it with pescatarianism (eating farmed instead of wild), or eventually, bivalve veganism [0]. [0] (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxznq/are-scallops-vegan https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxznq/are-scallops-vegan)
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >Veganism can work, if you are knowledgable about your body's requirements. It can with minimal effort if you try to follow the daily dozen [1] which (for an adult) you can easily check off a significant portion of those in a single meal. In my breakfast smoothie alone I handle all of the fruit (and then some), 2-3x the berries, all of the cruciferous and greens the flax (and chia), the spice, most of the grain (I blend oats in because I'm not a fan of oatmeal), the spices (which I exceed just via turmeric and also add cloves and cinnamon most days). A child will need lesser quantities, and should be comparably easy, but I'm wholly unfamiliar with RDAs for children given I haven't been one in a long time and have no offspring. [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/ https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/
sam36 7y ago
This is apparently a real issue even in the USA, not sure where the ideas came from but I have a direct experience. While at a funeral for an older man at a church I attended, my wife and I met a younger lady that was our age and she was very talkative and wanted to go out and have lunch with us. She stated that her husband (who worked at a large tech hosting company) had a "computer job" (in reference to me) as well. We went out eat, I met her husband, all seemed normal. We were both newly married, and my wife and her both ended up pregnant just months apart. So it was feeling like this was going to be one of those "life long" friendships since we seemed to have so much in common... and then... My wife and her both gave birth to healthy children though things quickly started to change in our friendships. I consider myself a christian fundamentalist and my wife and I started to think it was strange that our new friend seemed to be way more opinionated and strict with how she was going to raise her daughter. This was realized when we offered to help babysit since she was going to try to go back to her teacher's aid job. It was the scheduling... she had everything scheduled for this 5 month old baby. We were to every 2 hours feed her x number of ounces of freshly pumped breast milk. Problem is, the kid sucked down the entire day's worth in just two feedings. On top of that, we were to write down how long the naps were (which also were "required" to happen every 2 hours or so) and when bowel movements happened and what they looked like. Then there was the smell. The kid was just plain filthy, the mom had already bragged about how they don't really do baths any more since its "bad" for the skin. The extra clothes she brought were nasty too. So baby got a bath and we washed the extra clothes. The mom returns 8 or so hour later. We informed her of how the kid sucked down the milk and acted like she was staving, but mom was disappointed in that we didn't follow the schedule. After all, if we followed the schedule, we would not have ran out of milk... Something didn't seem right, but we were naive. Then a few months later, while over at their house for dinner, they informed us that they had all gone vegan. So there was no meat or cheese to eat and they had taken their (now 8 month old) daughter off of milk as well. To eat, we were given some thin vegetable soup with some mashed cauliflower on the side. The daughter got a small handful of raw diced squash and some beans which she gulped down practically whole in a matter of minutes. The irony is both parents were quite over weight (nearing 300lbs). The daughter was strictly forced vegan but they were not. Mom still got her Dr.Pepper while baby got water and squash. They at one time asked us to baby sit at 9pm so they could have a "parent's night out" which was explained as they were going to go get doughnuts followed by margaritas at a mexican restaurant. Not sure how you can even mix those two... Being christian fundamentalists, we declined since we weren't going to help someone get drunk and drive themselves home. One of the last times we met, they had informed us CPS had been visiting them. Apparently their daughter was running a fever at night so they took her to the ER. The nurse of course noticed the under-height and underweight child and told the parents they should try upping the amount of milk she gets every day. The mom of course squawked back that they're "vegan". And I guess the rest is history. I've never quite figured out where she got her weird ideas from. She had other friends and they all seemed to support each other's ideas. She was not anti-vax either (though I am). She went on to have a son (which she circumcised), and as far as I know, raised the same. Even though she is "vegan" she still pushes 300lbs. After her CPS story, we stopped hanging out and blocked her on facebook.

45 points by elorant 7y ago

Do they also make sure the parents aren't giving them junk food? Because I'm pretty sure obesity is a bigger problem than this.

DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
Well, if the parents don't allow their children to eay anything other than junk food, then yes, that should be forbidden. Does that happen though?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/03/health/poor-diet-blindness-scli-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/03/health/poor-diet-blindness-sc...
  - ScottFree 7y ago
    Do you have statistics on how common this is?
jbob2000 7y ago
Vegan diets are much more destructive to children than candy and pop. If a child was only eating candy and pop, then yes, it would be harmful. But usually, kids eat junk as a supplement to otherwise stable meals. You need protein and iron to grow, you just can’t get a kid to eat the vegan versions of foods that provide this.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Are you seriously saying there's just no way for a parent to get their child to eat vegetables and legumes?
  - jbob2000 7y ago
    Didn’t say that, I said that it’s hard to get kids to eat vegetables that provide protein and iron at the same levels that chicken fingers do. Good luck getting a kid to eat a plate of spinach.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      All depends how you're raised. My sisters and I devoured vegetables. My mother would have a plate of cut-up turnips waiting for us when we got home from middle school. Yum. I still eat raw cabbage and turnips as snacks into my 30s because of that while everyone around me asks me how I could eat that. You're thinking of a kid who has been raised on ketchup and chicken fingers suddenly encountering a plate of spinach leaves for dinner. Sure, I'd expect problems in the short term. But let's take a little bit of responsibility as parents. I had a neighbor who was fed so much candy at her house that when she slept over at my house (slumber party) she would throw tantrums because my parents didn't pair candy with dinner. I'm sure her parents thought the same as you: heh, good luck getting children to eat chicken fingers without their side of candy, it's the only thing that works for us!
- Madmallard 7y ago
  I was told (I believe by a doctor) that the iron you get from vegan sources isn't readily absorbed anyway. It id best to get heme-iron from meat as it is readily absorbed
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    This is true, however it's not as severe as people think and you can easily get several hundred % of the RDA of iron in a day on a whole food, plant based, diet. https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/iron/ https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/iron/ has some content that covers this /r/plantbasediet semi-regularly has this come up in threads too
- chunkyslink 7y ago
  Please provide evidence? Have you seen The Game Changers movie ?
  - jbob2000 7y ago
    I’m sure the evidence is out there, but I have so many first hand experiences of people having health issues from vegan diets, that I’m not terribly motivated to go out and look for it. When I was in high school, I had a few friends who tried to go vegan. One fainted in the shower, another fainted during track and field, one was falling asleep in class all the time. As soon as they went back to their normal diet, everything went back to normal for them. In first year university, a friend lost 30lbs and became very emaciated from their vegan diet. You could say “they were doing vegan diets wrong” and I would agree. That’s the point. It’s extremely hard to do vegan diets “right”.
    - chunkyslink 7y ago
      I know many many, very healthy plant based people and athletes. I regularly run ultramarathons and I cycle 30 miles a day to work (2000 ft of climbing) and I'm plant based. Would you say I'm doing it right? I don't do anything especially difficult with my diet. I would suggest that film. Might open your eyes.
    - HuShifang 7y ago
      Ok, one more anecdote for you: I've been vegan for about five years, for ethical reasons. (Which is to say, I basically have eaten a similar diet to what I did before, only vegan -- so vegan ice cream in lieu of dairy ice cream, sofritas Chipotle burritos rather than steak Chipotle burritos, Beyond burgers rather than cow burgers.) I've taken the occasional multivitamin but nothing special -- I get B12 and all that from fortified soy milk and other foods. I'm physically larger -- at six foot, my weight has ranged from 202 to 185 lbs as a vegan rather than 185 to 170 lbs as it did when I was omnivorous -- and run (my main form of exercise) faster, farther, and more frequently than when I ate omnivorously (I.e. it's not that I've gotten fat). Blood work has always been perfect, recovery times much lower, energy levels fine, etc. Zero health issues. Your friends were doing it wrong. Probably, they were eating nothing but salads, or stacking dietary restrictions (e.g. gluten-free or raw).
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  How? On a whole food, plant based, diet it's easy to get EVERYTHING with the exceptions of B12 and vitamin D which can easily be supplemented either as pill or by fortifying foods (fortified nutritional yeast, fortified grains). Since going plant based I get far more vitamins/minerals/micronutrients than I EVER did eating a largely meat-based diet. Go take everything you'd eat in a day and plug it into Cronometer (or a typical standard american diet) . Then take a whole food plant based diet that comes close to (or does) hit the daily dozen [1] with the kcals within 5% of your typical diet and look at the differences. Purely subjectively I feel incredibly better eating plant based. Last year I was eating 1-1.5lbs of meat a day and a bunch of processed foods as a strength athlete with vit a in limited quantities from the occasional organ meat and some vitmain c from the occasional sweet pepper with minimal fiber. Now I'm eating a fraction of the protein I was (yet my strength keeps going up, my recovery is far better and DOMS severity is way down). Yesterday in 2086 kcals I had: - 182% of my daily fiber (pre-plant based I'd hit 20-30% and poop something the consistency of modelling clay) - 71% calcium (which I further supplement with a pill) - 0% b12 (which I supplement via pill once a week) - 100% folate - 349% vitamin A - 48% B1, 76% B2, 49% B3, 55% B5, 268% B6 - 466% vitamin C - 0% D (which I get daily in my calcium supplement) - 36% Vitamin e - 157% Vitamin k - 68% copper - 261% iron - 62% magnesium (which I supplement 100% RDA at sleep anyway because it helps me fall asleep fast) - 87% manganese - 41% phosphorous - 201% potassium (before plant based I'd rarely hit 100%) - 13% selenium (was travelling last weekend so didn't get to the health food store to buy more brazil nuts) - 69% sodium (pre-plant based I would hit several hundred % to over 1000% daily) - 19% zinc - 108% protein (77.7g with via cystine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine and valine) I ate 65g mixed greens, 536g bananas, 11g of carrots, 28g of dates, 1g of turmeric, a great value 'keep it green fruit & vegetable smoothie' pack I found in the bottom of the chest freezer, 544g of yellow potatoes, a single serving bag of quest protein chips I had leftover from going pre-whole food, 1 g ground cinnamon, 432g of black beans, 285g of drained sweet corn, 174g of sweet peppers. On a typical weekday pre-plant based I'd have had 1lb of ground chicken, a #2 from McDonalds for breakfast (sausage egg cheese mcmuffin with a hash brown and a diet coke), about a half pound of chicken breast, 40-60g of protein powder and a pouch of Uncle Ben's microwave rice or some microwavable macaroni and cheese. Using the rice pouch in the former meat-heavy diet instead of mac, and 40g of protein powder, I was getting: 2141 kcals - 18% fiber (6.9g) - 21% calcium - 138% b12 - 12% folate - 21% vitamin A - 72% B1, 106% B2, 393% B3, 147% B5, 291% B6 - 6% vitamin C - 2% D - 20% Vitamin e - 4% Vitamin k - 51% copper - 180% iron - 40% magnesium (which I supplement 100% RDA at sleep anyway because it helps me fall asleep fast) - 8% manganese - 193% phosphorous - 96% potassium (before plant based I'd rarely hit 50%) - 185% selenium - 140% sodium before hot sauce on the rice and ground chicken - 88% zinc Now, in which scenario do you think I'm getting better nutrition... [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/ https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/
- seanhunter 7y ago
  I'd love to see a source demonstrating that vegan diets are more destructive to children than candy and pop. As to your assertions around protein and iron, this is a commonly-held belief that is partially correct, but based on a fundamental misconception about how diet works. Your body doesn't make protein directly using dietary protein. It digests protein in the diet into amino acids, which are transported through the bloodstream and used those amino acids to make protein. As long as you have a balance of all the essential amino acids in your diet it doesn't matter where they come from. Animal protein sources are "complete proteins" (ie they contain all essential amino acids). Although there are complete protein sources that are vegan (eg soy), most vegan protein sources are incomplete (they contain some essential amino acids but not others), so vegans need to be more careful than non-vegans. However as long as they have some grains and some legumes they are getting all the amino acids and will be fine from a developmental standpoint. For example, see https://www.verywellfit.com/vegan-protein-combinations-2506396 https://www.verywellfit.com/vegan-protein-combinations-25063... Likewise, there's also no reason for a vegan diet to be deficient in iron or anything else, but again, it's necessary for vegans to be a little more thoughtful than meat-eaters to ensure this. See for example https://www.everydayhealth.com/anemia/anemia-risk-for-vegans-and-vegetarians.aspx https://www.everydayhealth.com/anemia/anemia-risk-for-vegans...
cbsks 7y ago
Just because there are larger problems doesn’t mean that they should ignore the smaller problems.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  Sure, but we're far from prioritizing headlines accordingly.
the-dude 7y ago
Are you living in Belgium? Did you look up the stats?

RenRav 7y ago

>Children can follow a vegan diet if it’s accompanied by medical supervision, regular blood tests, and vitamin supplements This really should be the case for any diet for children. It makes sense to invest a little into society's future.

groovebits 7y ago
A child does not need vitamin supplements in a omnivore diet though
- vertex-four 7y ago
  Depends on the actual food supplied. They could probably do with it if they eat fish fingers and chips every night.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  In many countries, it's darn near impossible to achieve an omnivore diet that isn't supplemented. There's direct supplementation in things like vitamin D milk, folate fortified wheat, and iodized salt, but, also, supplements added to animal feed serve to increase the levels of some nutrients in their meat. Notably, B12. What's interesting to me is the level of overlap between the list of things that vegetarians are advised to take pills for, and the list of nutrients for which fortification is typically applied to animal products. The big gap is calcium, which people are often advised to get from milk, but that also seems like a kind of crap piece of public health advice given that ~75% of the world population is lactose intolerant. My sense is that vegetarians and vegans do have a higher need to voluntarily supplement their diets, but this is as much about public policy around fortification assuming that everyone eats an omnivorous diet as it is about the vegetarian or vegan diet itself.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    You're stat is technically close to correct, but the implication is wrong for many HN readers. Around 68% of the global pollution have lactose malabsorbtion, but only 36% of people in the US have lactose malabsorbtion. Not everyone with lactose malabsorbtion is lactose intolerant. > You are more likely to have lactose intolerance if you are from, or your family is from, a part of the world where lactose malabsorption is more common. In the United States, the following ethnic and racial groups are more likely to have lactose malabsorption: > African Americans > American Indians > Asian Americans > Hispanics/Latinos https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/lactose-intolerance/definition-facts#common https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-disea...

thrower123 7y ago

Good, this should be seen as a case of child abuse. It's not healthy for children. If adults want to take up that diet, then fine for them, they can make their own choices, but children have no choice but eat what is put on the table. The other issue is that your kid is going to be "the vegan kid". In general, one should not try to paint a target on one's children if one can avoid it.

chunkyslink 7y ago
Have you got any science to back up your emotions ?
h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
>The other issue is that your kid is going to be "the vegan kid". In general, one should not try to paint a target on one's children if one can avoid it. There were plenty of vegetarian kids in my school with me (vegans were a rarity then), and they didn't get any particular stick for it. Besides, even if they aren't vegan they'll still get short/tall/pimply/ginger/nerd/.* of the same intensity, so I think this is a pretty weak argument.
- thrower123 7y ago
  Being ginger isn't such a pain in the neck for other people to make accomodations for if they want to include you. All of these competing quasi-religious food restrictions introduce unnecessary overhead. And people are often not reasonable about bowing to the demands of politeness or necessity, and insist on absolutism in their diets. Frig trying to plan a birthday party when little Timmy's parents think he should be vegan, and little Billy's parents think he is gluten-intolerant, while Frankie's parents are enforcing paleo raw foods, and your kid just wants a regular Funfetti cake and real ice cream.

Jamwinner 7y ago

A step forward. Note this is the case in the USA also. If your child is malnurished for any reason, you are responsible. How people spin the protection of children as bad, because of their own bias, boggles the mind. Nothing is wrong with feeding your kid veggies, but something IS wrong with denying your child nutrition based on your own philosophical hangups.

chunkyslink 7y ago
> philosophical hangups This is a strong statement, when there is more than enough evidence to support that everything is available in a plant based diet. Modern scientific thinking will tell you that eating a plant based diet is 1. The best way to fight climate change and ecological destruction and species extinction. 2. The health benefits to athletes of a meat free diet are now known and logged. The only slightly philisophical hangup would be against animal cruelty and global agribusiness. The rest is science and in the public domain.
- dalore 7y ago
  There is no evidence (and actually evidence to the contrary) that a plant based diet can provide all essential nutrients. Sounds like you watched Game Changers on Netflix and now that's your knowledge. None of that was scientific at all and full of inaccuracies. All the athletes mentioned saw their performance go down after adopting a plant based diet. There are virtual no athletes at the top of their sport who got there on a plant based diet (plenty who started on animal and then moved to plant, but you will see their performance drop). Animals are needed to fight climate change. Without them the soils would have no nutrients. It's a symbiotic relationship. They eat plant matter we can't. Grown on areas that we couldn't grow stuff. So they are vital to supplement our food. Going plant based would be a huge ecological disaster.
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    You are so misinformed as to be silly. There is no reason whatsoever a vegan diet would lead to performance decrease. None. There's entire cultures that have survived on plant based diets just fine. Just because you're all in on keto you don't have to prove to the rest of us you have no idea what you're talking about. What does animals being needed for a healthy ecosystem even have to do with this conversation? You're just throwing jello on a wall to see what sticks.

ashelmire 7y ago

> This implies higher requirements for protein and essential fatty acids. The body does not produce them, it must be brought in via animal proteins. This is not true. Proteins and fatty acids are found in many common vegetables and it's not difficult to get a healthy balance of the above. Harvard's school of public health, recommends, "Get your protein from plants when possible" [1], and it's not hard to find many other sources suggesting the same. 1. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/protein/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...

dalore 7y ago
It's well known that plants can't/don't provide all essential nutrients without supplementing. B12 is a major one amongst others. Yet the reverse is true. Sidenote: I wouldn't put much stock in Harvard school of "nutrition". They have massive conflicts of interest with companies like Monsanto and also numerous problems with their methodology like oversimplification of the issues. https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2013/05/27/top-science-journal-rebukes-harvards-top-nutritionist/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevorbutterworth/2013/05/27/to...
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  B12 deficiency isn't even well understood. The amount you need is in micrograms over multiple years. And no you cannot survive properly on an all meat diet. Wow. Your lack of knowledge on the subject of food nutrition is very poor. It's interesting you decry Harvard as having a "conflict" so nothing they say must be true because it disagreed with your preconceived idea of truth.
- jdmichal 7y ago
  Wikipedia has plenty of other citations, if you have issues with Harvard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining#Criticism Summary: Yes, eating solely one food may eventually cause an issue. For instance, eating only rice would eventually cause a lysine deficiency -- on the order of ~88% of required amounts. Eating pretty much any other food that is not lysine-limited would likely be enough to make up the ~12% gap.

throwaway5752 7y ago

This headline must be some sort of basic intelligence test, that sadly a number of poster are not passing. Why do I say that? The animal-product-free diet isn’t technically prohibited, and the ruling doesn’t necessarily equate veganism with child neglect. However, it will make it easier to prosecute parents who impose the strict diet and whose children have health problems. and However, opinions on this matter vary worldwide. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, is not opposed to vegan diets. "Although there have been case reports of children failing to thrive or developing cobalamin deficiency on vegan diets, these are rare exceptions," the academy notes on its website. "Multiple experts have concluded independently that vegan diets can be followed safely by infants and children without compromise of nutrition or growth and with some notable health benefits." So if a kid in Belgium is visibly malnourished - ie, abused - and the mechanism of abuse is a restrictive diet that is not being applied correct, then the parents can go to jail. In general, the diet is not illegal in Belgium and one of the largest associations of childrens' doctors in the world (AAP) is not opposed to that restrictive diet (and comes close to endorsing it). This is a non-story.

poelzi 7y ago
Cobalamin deficiency is a result of our prewashed food in wester society. Vitamin B12 is only created by bacteria on the surface of plants and excessive washing removes it. Eat more dirt ;) (I sometimes inject B12 IM due quite low blood levels detected last year. Regular intake of supplements should also do the trick).

ACS_Solver 7y ago

The headline is somewhat misleading, unsurprisingly. Child neglect can lead to jail time. The ruling in question will make it easier to prosecute for child neglect in cases where children develop health problems due to a forced vegan diet without appropriate dietary supplements or medical follow-ups. The ruling itself is essentially a health authority stating that a vegan diet is not suitable for children unless properly supplemented - as far as I'm aware, it's generally accepted that vegans are at a high risk of certain deficiencies and need to pay particular attention to those. Here in Sweden, there have been some relevant cases lately. In one case, a couple was convicted after keeping their baby on a strict vegan diet, and ignoring several warnings from doctors that the baby was malnourished and needed milk. In another case, which was national news earlier this year, a 17-month old infant was brought to the hospital, underdeveloped and so malnourished that, according to the trial, she would have died within hours and was only saved by intensive care. The parents, as it turned out, had only given the baby vegan food, and had never taken the baby for any checkups.

deleted 7y ago
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bjoli 7y ago
> The parents, as it turned out, had only given the baby vegan food, and had never taken the baby for any checkups. Iirc they had used almond milk instead of breast feeding. Whoever thinks almond milk is a valid substitute for breast milk is unfit as a parent. I have hung on quite a lot of vegan forums, and these kinds of parents are rare and are quickly told right by others.
throwaway5752 7y ago
I think, if you were to ask pediatricians their greatest health concerns for children today, that most would say obesity and comorbities, then asthma. Malnourishing a child is obviously bad, whether it's poorly controlled vegan or keto. It is not a pressing public health concern, though.

HorizonXP 7y ago

Veganism can work, if you are knowledgable about your body's requirements. Realistically, most people are pretty crappy about what they put into their bodies. My opinion is that most people throwing stones against veganism aren't exactly paragons of health themselves. I know that I'm not, and I'm not vegan. The bigger issue with veganism is that the rest of us non-vegans can eat whatever we want and still be somewhat healthy, purely by accident. In veganism, you do need to be aware of the balance of amino acids your body requires, and the various vitamins and minerals too. You can't haphazardly just eat whatever plant-based foods you want; you have to plan a bit more. I would hazard a guess that most new vegans are just jumping onto what's trendy, without doing adequate research. Just look at the swathes of vegan YouTubers that recently had to start eating meat again due to health problems. With new products targeting vegans becoming available, this is getting to be a bit easier. I have an infant son that is currently intolerant to dairy and eggs, even when his mom ingests it and he gets it via nursing. We've had our share of frustrations with trying to find products that they both can eat that don't have milk, eggs, or milk-based ingredients. So I'm a fan of the new options available. My fear is that these products start to go down the path of gluten-free foods; that it becomes a marketing buzzword and makes it impossible for the actual target market (i.e. celiacs) to actually eat the foods. Personally, if I ever decide to give up meat, I'd probably ease into it with pescatarianism (eating farmed instead of wild), or eventually, bivalve veganism [0]. [0] (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxznq/are-scallops-vegan https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxznq/are-scallops-vegan)

ryanmercer 7y ago
>Veganism can work, if you are knowledgable about your body's requirements. It can with minimal effort if you try to follow the daily dozen [1] which (for an adult) you can easily check off a significant portion of those in a single meal. In my breakfast smoothie alone I handle all of the fruit (and then some), 2-3x the berries, all of the cruciferous and greens the flax (and chia), the spice, most of the grain (I blend oats in because I'm not a fan of oatmeal), the spices (which I exceed just via turmeric and also add cloves and cinnamon most days). A child will need lesser quantities, and should be comparably easy, but I'm wholly unfamiliar with RDAs for children given I haven't been one in a long time and have no offspring. [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/ https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/

sam36 7y ago

This is apparently a real issue even in the USA, not sure where the ideas came from but I have a direct experience. While at a funeral for an older man at a church I attended, my wife and I met a younger lady that was our age and she was very talkative and wanted to go out and have lunch with us. She stated that her husband (who worked at a large tech hosting company) had a "computer job" (in reference to me) as well. We went out eat, I met her husband, all seemed normal. We were both newly married, and my wife and her both ended up pregnant just months apart. So it was feeling like this was going to be one of those "life long" friendships since we seemed to have so much in common... and then... My wife and her both gave birth to healthy children though things quickly started to change in our friendships. I consider myself a christian fundamentalist and my wife and I started to think it was strange that our new friend seemed to be way more opinionated and strict with how she was going to raise her daughter. This was realized when we offered to help babysit since she was going to try to go back to her teacher's aid job. It was the scheduling... she had everything scheduled for this 5 month old baby. We were to every 2 hours feed her x number of ounces of freshly pumped breast milk. Problem is, the kid sucked down the entire day's worth in just two feedings. On top of that, we were to write down how long the naps were (which also were "required" to happen every 2 hours or so) and when bowel movements happened and what they looked like. Then there was the smell. The kid was just plain filthy, the mom had already bragged about how they don't really do baths any more since its "bad" for the skin. The extra clothes she brought were nasty too. So baby got a bath and we washed the extra clothes. The mom returns 8 or so hour later. We informed her of how the kid sucked down the milk and acted like she was staving, but mom was disappointed in that we didn't follow the schedule. After all, if we followed the schedule, we would not have ran out of milk... Something didn't seem right, but we were naive. Then a few months later, while over at their house for dinner, they informed us that they had all gone vegan. So there was no meat or cheese to eat and they had taken their (now 8 month old) daughter off of milk as well. To eat, we were given some thin vegetable soup with some mashed cauliflower on the side. The daughter got a small handful of raw diced squash and some beans which she gulped down practically whole in a matter of minutes. The irony is both parents were quite over weight (nearing 300lbs). The daughter was strictly forced vegan but they were not. Mom still got her Dr.Pepper while baby got water and squash. They at one time asked us to baby sit at 9pm so they could have a "parent's night out" which was explained as they were going to go get doughnuts followed by margaritas at a mexican restaurant. Not sure how you can even mix those two... Being christian fundamentalists, we declined since we weren't going to help someone get drunk and drive themselves home. One of the last times we met, they had informed us CPS had been visiting them. Apparently their daughter was running a fever at night so they took her to the ER. The nurse of course noticed the under-height and underweight child and told the parents they should try upping the amount of milk she gets every day. The mom of course squawked back that they're "vegan". And I guess the rest is history. I've never quite figured out where she got her weird ideas from. She had other friends and they all seemed to support each other's ideas. She was not anti-vax either (though I am). She went on to have a son (which she circumcised), and as far as I know, raised the same. Even though she is "vegan" she still pushes 300lbs. After her CPS story, we stopped hanging out and blocked her on facebook.